Chapman banned from football for life, but football goes on

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Yesterday 12:05

The 2025/26 season maks the 100th anniversary of Herbert Chapman’s arrival at Arsenal. This series of articles covers the great man’s years in football.

By Tony Attwood

Previously in this series

At the end of Episode 16 we noted that Leeds City, managed by Herbert Chapman, were formally ejected from the League after failing to produce the financial documents the league demanded, the directors of Leeds refusing on the grounds that these documents were confidential.

We might add that from the details of the affair that have survived, the directors of Leeds City showed no willingness at all to save the club, if the price of salvation was the revealing of these documents; their argument, they suggested, was that the documents were confidential to the club. The implication was that they had done something wrong, but there was no proof.

And indeed, for them all was not lost, for they had an asset – their ownership of the ground, and the fact that it was quite clear that another set of businessmen would immediately be willing and able to buy the ground from the now dishonoured former directors, meant they had little to lose. And indeed this sale of the ground happened, and Leeds United rose from the ashes of Leeds City.

Leeds City last appeared in the league tables on 10 October 1919. And then, really rather amazingly, within one week after the disbanding of Leeds City, the new club, Leeds United, was formed on 17 October 1919, with the former Leeds City player Dick Ray as the managing director. They applied for, and immediately got, a place in the Midland League – the place they got being the one that had been occupied by Leeds City reserves whose previous results the newly formed Leeds United took over! (One really couldn’t make this up!!!)

Yorkshire Amateurs meanwhile had agreed to take over the Leeds City ground, but obviously, it was a much bigger ground than they needed, and so they then offered it to the newly formed Leeds United who accepted and quickly moved into Elland Road!

In effect through a series of incredibly simple moves, Leeds City had doubled back and become a viable club once again. And even the name “Leed City FC” did not die forever at that time for in 2006, Abbey Grange Old Boys FC, Adel FC and Leeds City Vixens, all united and formed Leeds City FC once again. Thus the old name lives on.

But to return to our tale of 1919. As we have noted Herbert Chapman was banned from football for life for his (undefined and without evidence) alleged role in the secret financing of Leeds City. Leeds United, as we have seen rose from the ashes of the old club and in 1920 the chairman of Huddersfield Town FC, Hilton Crowther, took over the newly formed Leeds United. In fact, the only person really to suffer was Herbert Chapman, who as far as all the evidence that we can find shows, had done absolutely nothing wrong at all!

Hilton Crowther’s plan was then to amalgamate Huddersfield Town and Leeds United, on the grounds that the crowd level for Huddersfield Town home matches was too low to make the club sustainable, and so given that of course we know now that Herbert Chapman’s next destination in football was indeed Huddersfield Town, it is worth looking at the state of Hudersfield Town in a little more detail, as it does, in fact, give us a clue as to what ultimately made Chapman leave Huddersfield for Arsenal, after his stunning success in winning the FA Cup and League (twice) in three successive seasons – with a club that had never won anything before.

The issue for both Chapman and the directors, was in fact crowds. In 1919/20 Huddersfield Town won promotion to the first division, by coming runners up in League Division Two, being eight points clear of the third-place club (the top two being promoted at this time).

	Team	P	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1	Tottenham Hotspur	42	32	6	4	102	32	70
2	Huddersfield Town	42	28	8	6	97	38	64
3	Birmingham City	42	24	8	10	85	34	56

But despite this success, Huddersfield Town in their promotion-winning season had an average attendance of only 14,500 in a ground built to house 50,000. The biggest crowd was in fact 47,527 for the fifth-round tie of the FA Cup match against Liverpool on March 6, 1920, FA Cup matches always getting higher crowds in those days, and Liverpool were then a first-division team (which in later years was not always the case).

At the time Huddersfield of the second division had lost just once in the league in the last 15 games, and the anticipation of the season was rewarded as we can see from the league table above. In fact they lost only one league game between 13 December 1919 and the end of the season and thus promotion was secured.

In this context one can see that the warning signs were already there: in their most successful season to date, and in the midst of a remarkable run of form, Huddersfield Town could on occasion almost fill their stadium (but not quite). But in contrast to this we might also note that the club’s lowest home attendance was 3,000 against Fulham on November 1, 1919. Huddersfield was not a hotbed of football enthusiasm (another key factor when we consider Chapman’s move to Arsenal).

So although the attendance figures rose with the excitement of promotion to the top division, even a good Cup run the club was still not filling the ground, and the fact was that the lowest crowd for a league game during that promotion season was around 4,000. The warning signs were there.

But these figures were achieved without any footballing rival playing “down the road” in Leeds, although to be fair the amount of travel by train from one city to another to watch football matches was still fairly limited.

Nevertheless the fact that on 31 May 1920 Leeds United were elected to the Football League, must have caused some concern for the ambitious directors of Huddersfield Town, although of course, for the 1920/21 season Leeds would be in the second division, and would ultimately finish eighth.

There is one other curious historical point to note here – the reformed Leeds, now under the name Leeds United, used the same home colours for their kit as Huddersfield Town, it is said “in recognition of the help” that Huddersfield had given to get Leeds going once again. Quite what the brothers Hilton and Stoner Crowther were up to building a 50,000-capacity ground for a Huddersfield Town club that often attracted crowds below 10,000, while helping Leeds along, we obviously can’t say, a century later. But it may have been that they realised, as Henry Norris had done in moving Arsenal to Highbury, the benefit of having two clubs in a certain proximity, which would keep football in the newspapers each and every week of the season.

But to be fair, we should add that the notion of detailed business plans incorporating such matters as the size of the town, and the percentage of men who might be attracted to a football ground, was probably not a key part of the thinking of the directors. We know that Henry Norris engaged in this sort of calculation and planning when he announced that Woolwich Arsenal would have to move to north London if it were to attract big enough crowds to survive, and we also know that Sir Henry spent months travelling around London looking for a suitable site, but this was still a new idea that was not part of mainstream planning thinking, at this time.

Indeed in those days, statistical planning was in its infancy and often not seen as a precondition of undertaking a major business venture. What Sir Henry Norris did was to use the structured approach that he had used as he became first, the government minister in charge of recruitment in the First World War, and then the minister in charge of conscription and finally after the war the man in charge of demobilisation.

But the fact was that for his first mission for the army after he volunteered, Henry Norris as he then was, was sent to Worthing to find out why absolutely no young men in that town at all were reported to be of suitable age to be conscripted to the armed services. This most certainly shows just how inept the thinking concerning people and planning, actually was at the time. In an era where that sort of situation could arise, it is perhaps not difficult to understand that although it was fairly obvious that Huddersfield could not support a football ground with a 50,000 capacity, the local well-healed speculators went ahead and built such a ground.

It was undoubtedly this lack of sociological and demographic understanding that subsequently hampered Huddersfield Town, for their financial situation which before the war might have been called “challenging” did not improve after the return of football in 1919 despite the club’s success. Yes, they could get the crowds for the biggest of matches, but Huddersfield was a town of modest size, with a tradition of playing and supporting rugby, rather than football. Football was for many, something they did in Leeds; Huddersfield was rugby country and the crowds simply did not come along to watch the football team. Which indeed was why the owner, Hilton Crowther, had previously taken the decision to try and move the Huddersfield club to Leeds to merge with United.

It was this kind of thinking that undoubtedly led the League management committee to perceive the city of Leeds as a more likely venue for a successful football club than the much smaller Huddersfield. But logic does not always hold sway and it seems that in response to such a put-down the Huddersfield team rallied, and money did begin to come to the club. These funds were then used to buy out the current owners, the Crowther family. Indeed it is interesting that the Crowthers, perhaps seeing more clearly where the future profits lay, immediately reinvested their funds into Leeds United FC.

But for the moment, in 1919, it was Huddersfield Town who entered the first division, having won promotion from the second, while the newly created Leeds United were of course obliged to start their new life, reborn, in division two. But from the start Huddersfield seemed to be playing beyond their natural strength and a run of poor results meant that by 18 January 1921 they were 18th in the table, only five points above the relegation places, having played a game more than those clubs in the bottom places. True Leeds United were also languishing in mid-table in Division 2, but the owners of Huddersfield had clearly expected more, and were constantly looking over their shoulders at the rise of the newly reinvented club in Leeds.

Thus the Huddersfield Town directors knew they needed help in terms of managing the team, and so in early 1921, after a run of five consecutive defeats that left Huddersfield by 5 March having played a game more than most of their rivals, and just four points above the relegation places, they decided to act.

And act they did in the most dramatic fashion. They approached Herbert Chapman (currently barred from football for life) and once he had suggested that he would not be averse to a return to football, together they appealed against the order banning him from football for life.

The story continues

Chapman banned from football for life, but football goes on

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